


Death Who Becomes

by Thranduilion



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:34:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4790861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thranduilion/pseuds/Thranduilion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I came for Carmilla, Ra’s al Ghul’s youngest and most monstrous. Death Who Becomes.”</p><p>(AU. Where Marvel meets DC meets Carmilla. Where Carmilla is one of the al Ghul children. Where Laura is, well, the infamous web crawler in red and blue who tries to save NYC. Where their paths collide, and who knows where they will go from there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Who Becomes

 

Nanda Parbat's shroud of darkness alone may make even breathing a struggle, but no living person can ever rival the al Ghuls in the game of fear. 

A pair of bare feet makes a series of quiet tap behind her. Deliberate, Laura realizes. If the owner wants to make her steps soundless, she can. Yet she doesn't. In the same way a spider strings the web to let its prey know of its presence, so does this woman. Nyssa’s shadow. Talia’s bane. Dusan's dearest little sister. Ra’s’ yet another forgotten daughter.

The tip of a scimitar touches her chin, forcing her still masked head to tilt up. The blade is dragged down the column of her neck, pausing briefly in the middle, and Laura can't help but swallowing.

“Well.” There comes a smooth voice that belies the hazard it possesses. Laura's skin crawls with how cold it is, almost an echo of the eerie atmosphere of the tower. “A spider trapped in her own web.” A pause, and Laura shivers. It is both the waiting and the anticipation that underlines this woman's presence. “How embarrassing.”

The woman’s unsmiling mouth thins into a line. The sharp blade of the scimitar presses into the fabric of Laura's red and blue mask, and the sound of the tearing in the fabric is loud in the dim hall. A lean finger, then two, reaches out, separating her mask from its neck counterpart, exposing the skin of her neck. Cold fingers, Laura thinks. Cold as if Death has become.

Her hair spills over her shoulders as the woman lifts her mask. _Stay your hand, Laura_ , she tells herself. _This is why you're here._

“Oh look.” The woman’s voice lightens. Still, it doesn’t diminish her cold, foul aura. “Such a lovely spider.” She lowers her scimitar, but doesn't sheathe it yet. “Tell, little darling,” the woman speaks, soft and eerily almost titillating, “of what business a spider has so far away from home, here in Nanda Parbat.”

Not a question, Laura notices. The game of fear materializes in a linguistic war as much. _Do not ask; command instead. Do not demand; order instead. Get a confirmation, not an answer._ The al Ghuls have long mastered the art, indeed.

“I came not for your father,” she finally says.

The woman remains unfazed. 

“You,” Laura rasps. She tries to get to her feet, but the woman’s scimitar moves faster and in a second its blade presses against her shoulder again. “It’s you I came for.” She tries her best to not flinch as for the first time since she was captured, bound, and brought to the Demon’s Head's youngest daughter, the blade cuts into her skin, tearing muscle tissues and lacerating flesh. _Pain is physical_ , she recalls her training. _Fear is not. Do not let your fear become physical._ “I came for Carmilla, Ra’s al Ghul’s youngest and most monstrous. Death Who Becomes.”

Ra’s al Ghul's youngest and most monstrous—that’s what Cap told her about this woman. That's what Laura remembers most from her training. The child who never leaves. The child who stays behind, a lone watchman of Nanda Parbat in a tower overlooking its desert, while her siblings wreck havoc against the world and, sometimes, their own father. Yet she knows everything. Rumor has it, Cap said, that she once engineered an earthquake that trod down the entire Kashmir Valley because a joint Pakistani-Indian army almost managed to cross to Nanda Parbat.  _She's not human_ , Cap said. _Be careful, Laura. Be very, very careful._

The woman looks Laura in the eye, still disinterested. “You came for me,” she repeats, her voice surprisingly void of mockery. “You must have heard of me, must you not?”

Laura nods, and the movement hurts her shoulder even more. She grits her teeth.

“I know who sent you,” Carmilla says, “though I know not why you still come, knowing who I am.”

“You're my maker.”

For the first time that evening, or probably since forever, Carmilla shows an expression other than the archetypal disinterest.

“You made me,” Laura says. Her ears ring, and her temple throb. _Pain is physical. Fear is not. Do not let your fear become physical._ “Six years ago you planted a bomb in a city in southeast Austria. You wiped out its entire population just to kill a target of the League. It was your only known assignment to date, yet the most lethal work of the League. My mother died saving me. I was stuck with her cold body for two days under the ruins of our hotel. You were the first thing in my mind when I gained power.”

“Is it revenge that you seek?”

Carmilla appears more surprised than Laura at finding how quick she responds to Laura. That, very briefly, and the look of apathy returns once more to her face.

“Your father planted yet another bomb. In New York. Millions will die if it detonates.”

“And they will, if my father has decided so,” Carmilla says. “I do not see why this concerns me or your supposed revenge.”

“It's a biological bomb made from the poison in your father’s blood—your father’s specialty. Neither I nor those who sent me can stop the bomb, but I can use your father’s blood to make the serum. I can’t get anywhere near Ra’s and I can’t reach your sisters, but you are a different case.”

Carmilla withdraws her scimitar from Laura's shoulder none too gently, and from the gash blood drips onto the stone floor. “You have told me enough,” she says softly.

“Did you think you’d need to torture me to get the information from me?” Laura forces out a chuckle. “No, my maker. I’m desperate, and I’m running out of time. New York has done nothing against you, so please. I’ll do anything. Help me.”

“You are very strange, web crawler. Brave, but strange,” Carmilla drawls. “But you have made two grave mistakes.”

Laura blinks.

Carmilla takes a step closer, then another, now standing right in front of Laura. This must have been a common scene for her, Laura thinks. Mighty men and women, on their knees, before the most monstrous of all al Ghul children.

To her surprise, Carmilla bends one knee.

“One,” she intones, her mouth moving slowly, so slowly. “For my design, you are too brash and in need for refinement.” She cups Laura's chin, her fingertips smearing the blood from Laura's shoulder to her neck, to her cheek, to her lips. “Two,” she pauses, and Laura almost loses her ability to breathe from the mere closeness. “Torture is not the only way to break someone.” Her fingers tighten on Laura’s chin for a moment before she lets go. The corners of her mouth tilt up in a shadow smirk of a predator.

Then her scimitar slips between Laura’s bound hands, cutting the ropes effortlessly.

Mouth agape, Laura knows that the League scouts who captured, bound, and brought her to Carmilla will not approve of their lord’s daughter’s decision, but they know better than to express their disapproval. Loyalty is the rule of the League, and the al Ghuls live by the word and make sure to enforce it within the League. _They’re loyal to their principle_ , Cap once said. _To be the light when the world is too dark; to be the shadow when the world is too bright._ Cap, Laura thinks, must have shared the sentiment, if not the understanding of how the concept of loyalty works.

The windows behind her are open, her web cartridge is at ready, and she can just take the leap and flee.

Yet in a second, web shoots out from her left wrist, targeted at the lone figure clad in a dark robe in front of her. Carmilla dodges the web, and the next second she is slamming Laura’s shoulders against the windowsill.

“Fool,” Carmilla rebukes. “Does the little spider not miss home?”

“I—need—your blood,” she hisses out.

“And here I am trying to be hospitable.”

Laura snorts. Carmilla is Not Amused, she knows, but hey, the woman hasn’t offed her, has she? She takes that as a good sign. “Sorry, but I don’t see any welcome party for this guest either.”

In the same second that Laura raises her chin, Carmilla spins her around, pulls her left arm behind her back so that her wrist rests between her shoulder blades, and bends her. The pain from the twist that her arm endures and the dizziness from looking down the height of 13,000 meters strangle her. Carmilla holds her down even more her stomach now is tightly pressed against the horizontal windowsill. Her free hand lifts Laura’s right one and makes it hold onto the vertical windowsill. Laura’s left arm is burning, muscles screaming as pain shoots up her whole body.

“Not—” she gasps, “not—cool.” She grits her teeth harder.

“How does a spider fall, hm?” Carmilla murmurs against her ear, Nanda Parbat’s chilly wind somehow uncannily tempered by Carmilla’s warm breath. “Does it fall when it miscalculates the distance?” An elbow presses onto the small of Laura’s back. “Or does it fall when it overestimates itself?”

Laura jumps.

Or, rather, springs.

Again, Carmilla dodges her easily. Laura’s swinging fist meets air, and she loses her balance and topples forward. Using the force of Laura's own fall, Carmilla once again captures her. With both hands held behind her now, Laura can only watch as Carmilla tips her chin up. She’s too close, Laura wants to scream. From this distance, the bridge of her nose is too much, the thin line of her lips is too much, the fathomless dark in her eyes is too much. Too much of Carmilla, too little air.

“Or should I say,” Carmilla pauses, a corner of her mouth pulling up, “it falls when it no longer defies gravity?” Then, just like the first time, she releases Laura.

Bewildered and humiliated, Laura can only watch her speak.

“I accept,” Carmilla declares. “You may stay. If you can survive me, you will have my blood.” She starts walking away. “I look forward to it, little itsy bitsy spider.”

Spluttering, Laura calls her names that, had her father—or, worse, Cap—heard, would earn her a lecture. She punches the wooden floor so hard she very nearly cracks her web cartridge.

-+-+-+-

 

The first time she tries her luck, she ends up crashing through three floors of the tower. Her back hurts like hell, but her web breaks her fall just in time. Above her, staring through the hole Laura has made herself, Carmilla looks down at her. Not even a flurry of dust touches her dark robe, and not even the slightest of change of expression is present on her face.

She shoots her web towards that face, which—as always—evades the sloppy attack easily. Her web hits a large, wooden beam, and gravity pulls the beam down onto her. She misses being flattened by the falling beam by a mere foot. Amidst dust and wood splinters, she hears Carmilla’s voice.

“You are destroying my house.”

-+-+-+-

 

When she tries again, evening of the same day, her back bears a harder fall. Though this time it is not from crashing through floors, the idea of staging a stealth ambush on an al Ghul child from above proves to be a Very Bad Idea. She can’t even see the flutter of the back of Carmilla’s dark robe before she is thrown out of the window. Only her web, which catches the windowsill, prevents her from falling to her death—a 13,000 meters not-so glorious death.

Carmilla looks down at her—again—from the window. “How is the view from there?”

“Why don’t you see it yourself?” Laura grumbles. “Some fresh air might do wonders to your personality.”

Carmilla makes a clucking sound with her tongue. “I’d rather hear it from you.”

Cursing, Laura shoots another web to her left, pulls back, and catapults herself towards Carmilla. She lands, rather ungracefully, on the windowsill.

Carmilla looks at her, tilting her head. “Well?”

She lunges at Carmilla, for a moment forgetting that this is Death Who Becomes. Carmilla doesn’t even unsheathe her scimitar; she merely twists around. An arm winds around Laura’s shoulders and grips the wounded one. Using it as leverage, Carmilla yanks her—hard—and slams her onto the floor.

Wind knocked out of her, Laura can hear her poor back protest in pain.

Humming, Carmilla presses a bare foot against Laura’s wounded shoulder. “You look good on your back, I must admit.”

Did the bastard just—

Enraged, Laura jerks the web still connected to both of her hands, tearing the windowsill and bricks from the wall. The rubble comes from behind Carmilla with such velocity, and yet it hits nothing, only stopping as it crashes against another wall near Laura’s head. The force of it pulls Laura’s arms above her head, and she groans at the pain tearing at her wounded shoulder.

Carmilla, catlike and graceful, lands on her tiptoes next to her, robe flapping gently against her ankles. She examines the damage to the room briefly. When she speaks again, a hint of annoyance distaste into her voice.

“Stop destroying my house.”

-+-+-+-

 

Two days into—the deathmatch? The bet? The foolish game?—whatever it is, Laura is pretty sure she will exhaust herself humoring Death for nothing and New York will dissolve into a biochemical waste.

But first—

“Do you have a sewing kit?”

Carmilla doesn’t seem surprised, but she looks over her shoulder at Laura.

Her cheeks are aflame. “Holes keep appearing in my suit, and it’s not like I have a spare.”

“Do they,” Carmilla murmurs wryly. “There is a sewing room on the fourth floor.”

Now isn’t this the weirdest arrangement ever, Laura thinks. She’s trying to save New York, and here is the only person whose blood might be her only help, who happens to be the daughter of an international terrorist, who happens to be the one threatening the city she wants to save, offering her repair for her apparel.

Carmilla returns her attention to the scroll she is reading. Silhouetted by the light from the torches on the walls, she looks darker.

-+-+-+-

 

A week passes. Laura has more bruises and cuts than from the three years she has spent defending New York from thugs, souped-up criminals, and mad scientists.

Carmilla starts inspecting the damage to her tower more seriously.

-+-+-+-

 

On the tenth day, Laura gives up on her suit. It is torn and tattered beyond repair now, and the robe she dons is kind of alright.

That is, until it flaps open when she jumps.

Screw comic books for making robes and capes look cool. Screw Carmilla for donning it exactly just cool.

-+-+-+-

 

Carmilla’s first use of weapons marks the second week. Not her scimitar, though—it has long been stored away. She wields a pair of hanbou, sleek, polished, and tame looking. Until it is not.

Laura can feel a new bruise forming on her hand as she blocks the swing of one of the hanbou. She’s pretty sure there are fissures on her bones as well. Carmilla crosses the distance again, and Laura raises her other hand to block against any blow that may come.

To her surprise, nothing does.

“You are frustrating,” Carmilla says. “You came here and demanded from me my blood. Yet you have not shown yourself to be up to your own challenge.” She looks disappointed, which confuses Laura. “Perhaps I was... misled by your initial determination.”

For some odd reasons, the words hurt.

“Get up.” Carmilla straightens up, unruffled. “I do not recall promising to babysit anyone. By morning, I expect to be left by myself here.”

“No—I can still—”

An unfamiliar expression crosses Carmilla’s face before it is smoothed over as quickly.

“I have to get your blood,” Laura enunciates. “No matter what.”

“Would that be all it takes?”

“Huh?”

“Would that be all it takes,” Carmilla repeats, much slower, “for you to return to your city?”

She opens her mouth, about to say yes, but ends up merely nodding.

“Very well.”

Like audience to a slow motion movie, Laura watches Carmilla break one of her hanbou, slash the rugged end across her palm, and swing her hand at her. Blood splashes with a sickening sound onto Laura, the floor, the wall. From the mangled hand that it comes, it drips, and the sight burns into Laura’s retinas.

“You have it now.”

Carmilla turns to leave, and Laura doesn’t see her again for the rest of the day.

-+-+-+-

 

The next time Laura sees Carmilla—or, rather, Carmilla lets her see her, she is soaking in the small spring in the dungeon of the tower.

Scrambling, she sinks herself deeper in the hot water the moment she hears Carmilla clear her throat. The steam obscures Carmilla’s figure, but it is she indeed across the spring. The ripples of water hit Laura on the face, as if trying to wake her up from the bizarreness of it all. “Can’t a girl have some privacy!” Laura yells.

A beat, then, “This is my house.”

“As if it gives you permission to ninja your way around,” she grumbles. The water ripples some more around her as she tries to cover her upper body.

Carmilla shifts, as if going to move to Laura’s side, and Laura scrambles backward so fast her back hits the wall so hard. “Hey!” As if humoring her, Carmilla halts and raises both hands above the water surface. Laura frowns at the sight. No wound from her earlier mischief, not even a scratch. “How—” She stops herself right away. The Lazarus Pit. The source of the al Ghuls’ power. A reminder that who she’s dealing with is more than human. “Right.”

The steam clears a bit, result of Laura’s movement, and she sees Carmilla tilt her head to the side, giving the impression of an act of thinking. Or sarcasm. Which is more likely.

“You are a fast thinker,” Carmilla states her observation, “but also very dense.”

“Your speaking in paradox confuses me,” Laura counters.

“Your setting up a challenge and not following it through confuses me,” Carmilla says. “Were you merely bragging, or have you gone soft?”

“Soft?” she shrieks. The nerves! “I’ll show you dickwad soft!”

Carmilla doesn’t laugh, but she takes a step forward. “Too bad I love a good challenge. Would you agree to raise the stakes a little higher?”

Cap’s voice in her head tells her a strict, resolute no. Her brain, however, is muddled by Nanda Parbat’s air, the tower’s shade, and Carmilla’s presence.

“W-what?”

“My poor design,” Carmilla coos, for the first time with derogating taunt in her voice. “I believe it is time to start refining you.”

Then there’s a hand on Laura’s wounded shoulder, fingers stroking the webbed tissues over the scar, a thumb hovering over a healing bruise on her neck. Her mouth falls open to yell, but she’s too winded to produce any. Strange noises, though, escape her throat, and Laura bristles. _Do not bargain,_ Laura remembers Cap's words from her training. _Do not risk your mission. Fight her, or flight from her._ To Laura's horror, the hand on her shoulder starts trailing to her collarbone with light touches, feathery brushes.

Carmilla leans in. “Come after me in daylight,” she pauses to rest her thumb on Laura’s jugular notch, “and for every failed attempt, I will have you at night.”

The thumb curls downward, applying pressure, and there’s sensation of breathlessness in Laura’s throat. When does the allure end and the subtle assault begin, she thinks. When does Carmilla stop being Carmilla and turn into Death Who Becomes?

A palm cups her hip. The back of Laura’s head hits the wall. Fingertips meet flesh, and Laura trembles. Every shrewd stroke reminds her that she’s the one who decides to come here and demand Carmilla's blood. For whatever price—price she hasn't realized until now that she doesn't have. No knowledge, power, or wealth to give. _What else to offer, Laura_ , she asks herself bitterly, _but yourself_.

“I—“ she falters, cornered. New York swarms in her mind, along with Cap and her father. She will not fail her city. Not now. “And if I succeed?”

“If you succeed,” Carmilla murmurs, “I will have you at night.”

Carmilla’s thumb leaves Laura’s jugular notch, trails down her arm, and holds both of her wrists behind her back. Laura can't help arching to alleviate the itching burn on her arm muscles. The movement pushes her tighter against Carmilla, whose lips curl upward in a ghost of a smirk. “Impatient,” Carmilla chides, not unkindly.

“P-perv,” Laura spits.

“Do you not think you have called me enough names?” A soft nibble accompanies the wry words whispered on her ear. “Even when you know nothing about me.”

“I know enough.” Talia, Nyssa, Dusan, and now Carmilla. Enough for her. Yet she can’t help the gasp, torn between needs and disgust, and she can’t help the canting of her hips either. Carmilla’s words are always spoken quietly, too quietly. Even the gritting of Laura’s teeth is louder. Even the mental image of Cap's shouting at her is louder. Even her heart’s objection is louder.

“So,” Carmilla says, “yes?”

It is Carmilla’s presence that speaks louder.

“Yes,” she forces out her answer, barely audible.

She can feel the lips on her temple curve into a smile. Of delight or sadistic pleasure, she doesn't want to know.

“Yes,” she repeats, louder.

Carmilla then withdraws at once—lips and hands and all. Suddenly they are one full foot away from each other, and Laura almost collapses, trembling with pent-up anger, frustration, and desire. In a second it takes her to look up, Carmilla surges forward again, trapping both of her wrists above her head, and there’s a hand between Laura’s legs.

She swallows down her moan. “Didn’t count you as—” That hand is distracting, too distracting. “—one who follows the tired cliché—oh—sleeping with the enemies and all.”

Carmilla hums against her neck. “Are we enemies now?”

“I—” Stop, hand, stop—don’t stop—the insistent rubbing, the diligent stroking, all the touching—Laura can’t think. “—am not sure I attended your christening as my friend.”

“How true,” Carmilla fakes a thoughtful pondering, but it comes out as a jibe as intended. “Smart of you, my design.”

“Wouldn’t want to—ah—disappoint my maker, would I?”

Then Carmilla is inside of her. Ripples of water, swelter, sweat—mouth agape, head thrown back, unbearable heat between her legs. The force of it lifts Laura to her tiptoes, and the water ripples some more as she arches. In mere seconds, the cords too tightly wound inside of her are unstrung, and her body bellows its release.

Carmilla looks neither pleased nor complacent.

Her hand, however, doesn’t stop.

It is only after her fourth—or fifth—or sixth—that Laura begs—begs!—her for mercy. Carmilla lets go of her wrists, and her feeble arms splash against the surface of the water. They submerge, much like her whole body. She can’t feel her knees. _So much for a cliché, Laura,_ she tells herself much later.

Carmilla steps out of the water, giving her a view of her back amidst the steam, as if giving Laura an opening to attack her. Lithe figure, lean muscles, limbs that move with ease, a dance of sinews. Laura curses herself for thinking of praises for that body, body that has been trained and fashioned to be Ra’s al Ghul’s most monstrous.

“The faster you get out from this bath, the faster you may get to save your city, little spider,” Carmilla says from the doorway. She continues after a beat, in a tone much lighter, though no less blasé, “Unless you need a help?” She offers a hand, a gesture of deliberate ridicule.

Laura throws one of the wooden low stools she can reach from behind her. Carmilla, effortless as ever, steers clear of the low stool’s path. It shatters against the doorway, creating a dent on the wall. Carmilla’s sigh is dramatic as she assesses yet another damage to her tower, and Laura fumes.

“I told you to stop destroying my house.”

-+-+-+-

 

 


End file.
